It’sa Bwar

Chapter 1
It’sa Bwar

It was the fifth night on the run. The group had settled down for the night. They were tired, hungry, and cold, and if that wasn’t enough to dampen their moods, then the previous topic which had left a bad atmosphere lingering in the air was surely enough to keep everyone quiet. The five of them; Sugimoto, Asirpa, Shiraishi, Ogata, and Tanizaki had set up camp about an hour ago after travelling without rest for two days straight for the second time in less than a week. This alone would put anyone in a bad mood, but the fact that they needed information from the next town along while they were being hunted like dogs was about to be the straw which broke the camel’s back.

Tanizaki said he would go by himself, that way even if he happened to be caught, it would only be him. Of course, this made Ogata substantially more suspicious of the man he didn’t even like looking at. Whatever the case, Sugimoto was adamant about not having the youngest member of their party go into town. This caused Asirpa to pout as she chitatap’d the hell out of snow rabbit offal. Shiraishi was just glad he was allowed to sit closest to the fire after falling into a small frozen pool when the ice cracked under his feet while chasing said unfortunate bunny. The tension was just beginning to wear off after twenty-plus hours of scowling and grunting when spindly branches groaned under fluttering weight a few yards away. In the same beat, Ogata had raised his rifle and popped an owl straight out of the tree without batting an eyelash.

“You startled me!” Asirpa hit the side of the sniper’s leg as he stood up.

The others spared a quick glance to the man shuffling off through the snow in order to retrieve dessert. The flames of their bonfire barely reached the tree-line of their camp in a tiny clearing, shrubs at hip-height protecting them from the growing blizzard. Shaking his head at the fuss, Tanizaki was the last to let his eyes leave the 7th Division soldier before going back to cleaning his weapon while the sharpshooter mumbled curses about not being able to find jack shit in the dark.

The advancing presence went without acknowledgement until a shadow even bigger than the well-built military men loomed at the edge of the clearing. Shiraishi was the first to notice the uninvited guest. His eyes and mouth shot open in unison, fish flakes and saliva spraying the side of Sugimoto’s face when the escapee swatted his only friend in the world.

“It’sa bwar!”

“I’ll kill it!” Sugimoto shot up, gripping the strap of his rifle.

Asirpa brandished her knife at the panic. “Don’t Sugimoto, you can’t aim to save your life.”

At this point, the other members of the party had halted what they were doing to defend themselves from the wild beast just like anyone in their right mind would. Although a beast it was, it was nowhere near as aggressive as what it should be for that season. Asirpa frowned at the figure which still hadn’t moved since Shiraishi alerted half of the mountain to where they were. Glistening crystalline eyes scanned the Ussuri bear head, the deep-rust coloured fur pelt overhanging oddly over the shoulders which did not match the giant skull and down until the bushes prevented her inspection from progressing. Not like she needed any more time to work out that they weren’t going to be had for lunch before they even got to have their own.

“You morons; it’s a person.”

“In a bearskin?” Shiraishi asked incredulously, as if a person wearing half a bear was the weirdest thing they’d come across over the past few weeks. Asirpa tried to settle the idiot pair but of course, nothing came of it.

A hand raised slightly from under the long cloak and the click of firearms signalled the stranger should be careful of making any sudden movements. “Your fire is going to cause attention-”

“Who are you? Are you alone?”

Sugimoto had stood properly by this point. Behind him, Tanigaki had the barrel of his half-cocked gun pointed at the oddity. The bear head bobbed once. The men jilted.

“Do you have a weapon?”

The bear head bobbed once again.

Wet branches rustled behind the stranger as Ogata advanced with his rifle trained on the back of the bear’s head. “An armed woman creeping around in the mountains alone; that doesn’t seem suspicious at all.”

The woman kicked the low hedge and snow flew onto the bonfire. Without so much as a pre-emptive twitch, the figure as tall as Sugimoto leapt at the group. Fizzling out, charred wood crackled and the light diminished. Swinging a stick which had been concealed beneath the pelt, the stranger swatted the back of the three heads as soon as they turned to see where she had gone. Accustomed to hunting in the dark, Tanigaki tried to tackle the stranger only to bump her hip. Off-kilter, the bear-wearing woman brushed past Asirpa. The small girl grabbed a fist of pelt and jabbed her in the back of the ribs with one of the thin logs which had been propping up Shiraishi’s damp clothes. A grunt followed and the men clambered blindly to not get in each other's way. The Abashiri prisoner scrambled around on his knees, his trembling hands rooting through the bags by the tree trunks in order to find something to relight a fire.

“I’m going to shoot.”

Shiraishi struck the flint repetitively, this time much harder, a metaphorical fire already under him. “Ogata, don’t you even think about it. You’ll hit one of us.”

Reaching out, the stranger ragged Sugimoto’s leg from under him. “A-Asirp-” His voice was cut off and the bonehead struck his leg out, connecting with something soft.

“Atch-” The stranger sucked up a breath and punched what she could make out was the side of a man’s thigh. Staggering up and holding her chest, she made a run for it. Or so she thought.

Ragged back by the fur covering her back, the woman was yanked to a full-stop. And then an unsolicited throw backwards over herself. Hitting pure white as a small fire began to grow just enough to illuminate the situation, her lungs forced out more than they’d had to in longer than she cared to remember. The group surrounded the lunatic who had attacked them out of nowhere despite her knowing full well she was outnumbered.

“Who are you?”

Folding over herself, she flopped into a sitting position. The hefty pelt draped off her shoulders and the head attached had landed by her right hip, it’s jaw a few inches from Shiraishi’s loincloth. Panting, the woman scowled at those surrounding her as a wealth of silver hair spilt over her crimson-stained shirt. The barrel of Sugimoto’s gun jabbed the air in front of her marred face but the expression he received caused his confidence to falter.

Lips twisting, the woman tilted her head as she twiddled a small rod of metal between her thumb and index finger. “I’m not impressed by your weapon.” Her smirk grew into a grin when the scarred man realized what she had in her hand.

“How about his?”

Verdant eyes surrounded by thick black soot took notice of the gun at her temple, and then the man behind it. Sizing up the shorter man dowsed in a standard military uniform and poncho, the stranger made a throaty hum.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Looking for poachers.”

“A woman out here on her own is dangerous.”

Clasping the grit in her hands, she hung her head. “Dangerous for you, maybe-”

“-We’re not poachers,” Asirpa told as she stepped around Tanigaki who had been protecting her in the scuffle. Her hand lowered the barrel of Ogata’s rifle as she approached the woman who was most definitely not Japanese. “Why don’t you eat with us and tell us what you’re doing up here by yourself.”

Wiping the blood from his nose, Sugimoto snarled at the foreigner. “She may not even be by herself. This could be an ambush.”

“I’m alone, that you don’t have to worry about.”

Glancing around the space now fully illuminated, she couldn’t see any of the metal traps she’d been following. Three of the men had guns, two of them old standard military rifles, the other a single-shot; the kid had a traditional Ainu carved blade, and the baldy was just that - considering he was wearing nothing but a loincloth far from being full, she doubted he was hiding much. Besides the few rucksacks and fabric bags, there was no way for them to be carrying the kind of equipment it took to set up the inhumane devices she had been dismantling for the past two weeks. Aside from that, the food - most of which was now scattered in the snow - was measly.

“That’s all the five of you are eating?” She pointed to the fallen fish skewers, skinned rabbits, and a pile of toppled mush.

Eyes going to the stump she’d been using as a cutting board, Asirpa dropped to her knees and cried out as she held her head. “The Chitatap!”

Leaning against the side of a tree, his gun still on the stranger, Ogata sneered at the ridiculousness of the situation. “Why are you so bothered about poachers? ‘Your Daddy own the land?”

“The Ainu own this land; do I look like I’m from here to you?”

“Then why do you care?”

“People shouldn’t kill for the sport of it. Animals are living things, too. And people should be especially frugal when taking things that don’t belong to them. Were you never taught that?”

“You’re out here in the mountains, in the dark, on your own, protecting animals that have nothing to do with you?”

“I never said it has nothing to do with me. We all have a responsibility to curb our greediness and leave things for others if we don’t need it.”

“Aren’t you just the pinnacle of Buddhism?”

“I’m not religious in that way.” Ruffling the snow out of her hair, the stranger clicked her tongue off her teeth at the snake-eyed man with his gun still gestured in her general direction. “I grew up in a place like this and it would piss me off to see ingrates trash through my home like whoever is passing through these mountains.”

“What makes you think it’s poachers? It could be Ainu or Matagi hunting for the winter.”

Starting to get up, firearms pointed at her. Holding her hands up, she jut her head to where she had initially been seen. “My bags are back behind that hedge.” Sugimoto gestured to Tanigaki and the man obliged. Reaching past the hip-height bushes, he picked up the woman’s belongings and brought them back to the group. “I kept a couple of them so I could take them into town in order to ask around the local blacksmiths and hunting suppliers. I’ve never heard of Matagi or Ainu using stuff like what I found. I’ve never heard of anyone using such cruel instruments at all, and I’ve been travelling a long time.”

Tanigaki carefully tipped out the contents of the bag which was at least three times the weight of the rest despite its smaller size. Metal clanked and jaws of iron thudded into the snow leaving deep indents as the attached chain-links slivered out like steel snakes.

Asirpa stared at the contraptions still covered in dried blood. “Where did you find these?”

“All over the west side of this mountain, a few on the one before. There are other large-scale traps set up which will no doubt seriously injure travellers if they don’t recognize hunting patterns. Whoever is doing this clearly has no regard for life, animal or otherwise.”

“Sugimoto, we’ve got to do something about this-” Asirpa was cut off by the foreigner before she could make her case.

“-There’s no need for you to get involved. I’ve already taken care of some of their party; I’ll be finished by the end of next week.”

Shiraishi had taken to covering his lower half with the woman’s pelt as not to freeze to death as he remained flat-backed against a tree just out of her grasp. “What, exactly, do you mean by taken care of?”

“You don’t seem like someone who uses a gun but you look slimy, clever, perhaps. How would you feel if you were put out of commission with your own trick?”

“I see. No need for further explanation.”

Crouching down, Tanigaki inspected the handful of various traps. “They look more complex than the average foreigner would use on a hunting trip. I’ve seen a primitive version of something like these,” he prodded one with the end of his rifle and looked up at the stranger. “but how did you know how to dismantle them without being affected by them?”

“I’m smarter than I look.”

“That’s funny because, to me, you look like a white Tanuki.”

“And you look like a snakey-eyed bastard,” turning her head to see the sniper with his weapon still pointed at her temple, the foreigner flashed her teeth. “I may hand out leaves pretending they’re gold, but your bite kills people.”

“Haven’t you already done just that?”

“Not to nobody who didn’t deserve it.”

“Then your point is moot.”

“You’ll be the only thing invalid if you keep pointing that scuffed up ‘.30’ at me.”

“A girl who knows her guns and how to take apart torture devices, charming.”

“Don’t make out that you’re not hard right now.”

“Er, excuse me…” Sugimoto grimaced at the twisted exchange, “how many people have you cut off so far?”

“Nine.”

“You killed nine people?”

“No, they killed themselves, I just moved their own traps into their way.”

Shiraishi sucked in a deep breath and squashed the sides of his face with his hands as he stared off into the darkness. “Wow, this is just how I wanted to spend my quiet time avoiding people.”

“I think it was a group of around fifteen. They seem to be driving deer mostly, but they’ve left behind squirrel, fox, and bear carcasses.”

“Is that where you got that?” Sugimoto pointed at the hefty pelt with a bear head still attached.

“Don’t be silly, Sugimoto. After killing a bear that big, even if it was one poacher, they’d divide it up; it would be more useful to sell.” Keeping her eyes on the woman’s, the small girl narrowed her gaze. “You killed that, didn’t you?”

Tilting her head, ashen locks sopped with sweat, blood, and melted snow sticking to her full-figured frame, the stranger gave a lop-sided smile. “And I used every bit of it.”

“No way. No fucking way; you didn’t kill that all by yourself. It must have been at least four hundred kilograms to be that size.”

“Believe what you like.”

“Can I see it?” Asirpa held her hand out.

The woman shrugged and jut her head at the man covering himself with the topic. Crouching and putting her face closer to the head, she inspected the features.

“I really feel uncomfortable with your head so close to my privates, Asirpa Chan.” Snatching the skull with both hands, the young Ainu teetered under the weight when she brought it closer to the firelight. “I didn’t mean undress me!” Squirming, the prisoner reached for the closest thing in order to cover himself. “Muohhh~ you’re going to turn out to be such a forward woman.”

“The eyes were carved out clean. The tongue, brain, and nasal cavities, too. The initial cut down the belly is evenly seamed and its snout is rubbery. It has an unusual tinge to its fur, too.” Looking up from her inspection, the Ainu’s eyes gleamed when they met the foreigner’s, “you’ve had this a while, haven’t you?”

“Around ten years. It’s had a few knocks and shots which caused it to lose patches of fur, so I had to line it with cheaper material as time passed.” Eyes on the article, she recalled how she had obtained it. "I was seventeen when it attacked me and nineteen when I found it again. I may have lost my chance at finding a guy to love me for my looks, but I still won in the end, and that's what matters to me."

“I can only imagine what it was like when it was alive. It really is beautiful.”

"I couldn't help to think so too, even when it was doing this to me," she pulled the cropped yukata made into a shirt down her arm to show the small girl the gruesome wound which marked her left side.

The two, thick pearlescent-mauve scars running from the bottom of her cheek and edge of her jaw was easily connected to the four claw marks gouged from her outer chest and over her shoulder with no imagination needed. Hidden amongst battle-scars of her own, an amalgamation of black designs consisting of traditional Ainu, district gang-work, and nearby island-prison tattoos interwove the mars rivalling some of Sugimoto's before taking refuge under her grubby sarashi.

"When it reared up to attack me, the early dawn behind it, I thought it was a demon come to take me to the underworld because I was sure it was ablaze."

“Is no one going to mention that she wears a dead bear’s skull over her own?”

The ashen woman quirked her brow and looked to the prisoner, “better it be dead than alive while I do that.”

“We’re not each other’s enemies. We should be amicable, especially when it’s possible that those poachers are still ahead of us.” The small girl looked to the pale woman tying her long white hair up with twine, the ends coated maroon. Catching the grimace when the older woman had to raise her arms, Asirpa asked, "are you injured? There is blood on your hair and shirt."

"I got a knock to the ribs a couple of days ago but I'm fine."

Sugimoto shifted his gaze from the youngest admiring the trophy and to the stranger fixing her cropped yukata shut. “We never did catch your name.”

“That’s because I never said it,” her coal-slicked verdant eyes scanned the rest of the group.

Examining those around her, she made a mental note as the youngest introduced the members of her group. Sugimoto: scarred face, ex-soldier. Tanigaki: obvious native hunter - likely Matagi, chest for days. Shiraishi: bald, tattooed, slimy-clever - clearly ‘one of them’. Ogata: also a soldier at some point, likely pointing his gun at people way too much, will kill her if she doesn’t laugh at his sick murder-jokes. And then the girl introduced herself. Asirpa: an eleven year old Ainu girl with a harem of beefy men hanging out in the middle of death-trap mountain. Splendid - she got it. The foreigner shrugged to herself at her mental cataloguing. She’d come across weirder.

“Miss,” Tanigaki held his hand a little in front of his chest to get her attention, “can you tell me more about these hunters?”

“I really dislike calling them that, but I don’t see how it could hurt to tell you what I know. If nobody’s planning to kill me,” her eyes slid to the man with feline eyes and nimble fingers, his figure slinking around a tree and out of the glow of the fire. “I can stick around for a few hours.”

The rest of the group retook their initial spots around the fire bar Shiraishi, who had not only been almost drowned and frozen in the last few hours, but then was also forced to flail around in snow in a strip of cloth only to have his only saving grace-

Taking her pelt back once the small girl had finished inspecting it, she tossed it onto the lap of the near-naked tattooed man without even looking at him. Adjusting her sitting position so her right leg was bent beneath her rear, the other wrapped around the side of her left hip, her toes from both feet touching behind her back. Scooping her bags towards her, the ashen woman fiddled through the packed cases made from tanned hide and handmade woven satchels.

“It’s a good job you weren’t so heavy-handed with these,” passing over two bottles, she gestured for those around her to indulge, “or else we’d all be blind-sober as well as freezing and somebody would be dead.”

“Is this sake?”

“What else could I buy with animal skins and short tours for sailors wanting to try gold-panning? It's not like I have an abundance of opportunities to wear extravagant kimono.”

“Gold panning?”

“It’s a thing for those who are temporarily docked and aren’t sailing out any time soon for one reason or another-”

“-Do you know anything about panning?”

“Besides the fact as many men die traipsing the freezing Hokkaido waters searching for a bullshit fairy tale than they do raising their guns in war? They’re idiots, quite frankly.”

“Sugimoto panned for a while, didn’t you?” Asirpa perked up.

“'Proves my point.”

“What would you know? You’ve known me for about fifteen minutes!”

“Why on this earth would any native or long-term resident take a stranger to a place which actually has gold? Every guide I've known of takes the fare they pay after dropping a few gold flakes in the water while the morons aren’t looking and then say, ‘oh well, too bad - times up’. It’s a simple fact.” Looking at the Matagi, she gestured to the burgundy bag by his right foot. “Let’s not all go out bitter we didn’t get what we wanted.”

“What do you want, Stranger San?”

“I want everything I want,” she leaned back, her neck cradled by a furry pillow made from one of her packs resting against a tree. “How can anyone ever answer such a question eloquently without spilling their guts and telling their entire life story? Right now, I want to get rid of those bastards who are messing around on this mountain. Tomorrow - I dunno, I may wanna help you find that Ainu gold; or perhaps Abashiri tattoos; or maybe, just take a long soak in a real bath. I don’t know, yet.”

The woman’s words froze the group again. But this time, before guns could be pointed at her, she remained in the relaxed lull as she brought her hand up to point at the top of Shiraishi’s bare shoulders. “The panners, townsfolk, and sailors who dock here all talk about it, but they have no clue about where to look.” Lighting the thin pipe she’d taken from one of her bags, she twirled the metal mouthpiece over her lips as she stared up at the black sky.

“You know about the Ainu gold?”

“A little - unfortunately for me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You boys who fought for the military may not have an issue dropping your duties, but I wasn’t in the army. I have other promises that I have to keep.”

“'You have a poor old sucker you promised to marry who actually made it back?” The low rumbling snark came from behind a tree on the other side of the circle.

“Like I’d be allowed something like that back then even if I wanted it - not that I did, nor ever will.” Rolling her eyes, she wobbled her head. “My father would have killed me before he saw me with anyone other than a man with a land title and substantial social pull.”

“That must be nice for someone to want something like that for you.”

“Nice? I may as well have been sold off like a chair the amount of stock he put in me as a person.” Cracking her neck to the side, she winced when her rib muscles contracted. “I left my birth family a very long time ago, and I paid for it with all I had. I think that’s all you need to know.”

“You spent time with Ainu, didn’t you?” Asirpa asked as she handed over a fish skewer in exchange for a bottle of whatever was making the older members of the group loosen up.

Snatching and holding the booze just out of the kid’s reach, Sugimoto glared at the newcomer. Tilting her chin, her black smudged eyes travelling from the scarred soldier to the Ainu, the foreigner spoke in words none of the men could understand. Asirpa glanced to Sugimoto and then back to the woman with a smile and a nod.

“What did she say?” Sugimoto instantly became irate at the interaction, his eyes shifting between the pair.

“Let’s eat and take an early night.”

“Is that what she said?”

Shoving a portion of the chitatap into her awaiting mouth, Asirpa nommed. “Just do as you’re told for once.”

Sugimoto glanced to the stranger and she hummed with eyes closed into upturned crescents.

Updated: 14th May 2020 - 21:44